


Coffee and Angels

by TheStrangeSeaWolf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Coffee, Coffee Shops, Eyebrows, Gen, Glasgow, Missing Scene, Missions, Post-Episode: s08e01 Deep Breath, Pre-Episode: s08e02 Into the Dalek, Staring, attack eyebrows, staring contest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26300116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStrangeSeaWolf/pseuds/TheStrangeSeaWolf
Summary: Why is the Doctor three weeks late for fetching Clara coffee? Well, thereisa very good reason.This story was made into an audio adventure by the wonderful Alia E. Torrie.You can find it here on youtube
Relationships: The Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 27
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an artwork/comic by @attadance on twitter. I hate housework and so I do this fic in a special way. I release a new chapter every once in a while throughout the day, interchanging with doing my housework. Thus, it keeps me motivated to do it while at the same time I can entertain my followers on twitter. I assure you the final chapter _will_ come later today.

He was a new man. He had just regenerated, and everything was new, and confusing, and strange. So, he kept holding on to the only thing he was absolutely sure of in his new life: Clara had _not_ left him, and Clara had given him an order.

He was a man on a mission.

He was a man on a mission in Glasgow.

He was the man who would fetch his impossible girl some coffee.

His steps were quick and sure, despite the chaos that was still inside. He scanned his surroundings for the next place where a man could get some coffee.

He turned around the next corner and froze.

Before him stood a statue. An angel. A weeping angel, to be exact. It reminded him of something. It seemed strangely familiar. It should tell him something, but he couldn’t quite say _what_ it should tell him.

There was something.

Something you had to do when you encountered a weeping angel.

More precisely, something you _shouldn’t_ do when encountering a weeping angel.

But he couldn’t quite recall _what._

He tilted his head and blinked.

This is the comic by @attadance that inspired this fic:


	2. Chapter 2

When he opened his eyes again, the scene had changed. It looked… earlier? He smelled the air. Yes, still Glasgow, but much earlier. He inhaled and smacked to get a better idea of the _when_.

“Glasgow, 1923,” he uttered to himself.

Oh, great!

Right. _Don’t blink_ , it had been!

Stupid Doctor, stupid, stupid, stupid Doctor.

He slapped his head with the heel of his hand a few times, in the hopes to get those old gears working again.

Gears?

He wasn’t a clockwork robot.

At least not to his knowledge. What was a clockwork robot? Oh, right! The events at Mancini’s Family Restaurant… Funny that a family restaurant didn’t have a children’s menu.

But he digressed.

Coffee.

Coffee was the important mission here.

He looked around for a place where humans sold coffee.

Ah, right, it was 1923, so there wouldn’t be any coffee shops.

Wait, if this was 1923 it was also a problem to get the coffee back to Clara. And get himself back to Clara for that matter.

What should he do now?


	3. Chapter 3

He stood still in the middle of the road.

A wheezing, groaning sound.

Surprised and thankful he leaned his head against the door of his most faithful companion and oldest friend.

“Hello, old girl.”

He pulled at the door, but it was locked. He searched his trousers and realized he hadn’t transferred the key from his old trousers to the new ones.

The TARDIS groaned annoyed and opened the door. He stepped in and thought that for once, his impossible girl hadn’t been right. He absolutely _loved_ how he and his TARDIS had redecorated. The interior now radiated dignity and style. He immediately went to the console. A thought crossed his confused mind.

“How did you find me?”

A humming sound.

“Oh, oh, fair enough, yes. I suppose we are linked somehow so shortly after regeneration.”

A very indistinct hum. Did she try to conceal something from him?

“Wait… you could always do that? Catch me when I have gotten myself into trouble and can’t get out of it myself?”

A refusing sound.

“I know that you are not my babysitter! I’m just…” he scratched his head, trying to think of something that wouldn’t make his old girl even more mad at him while still prying out this important piece of information, “…asking for a friend.”

A very loud, very annoyed groan.

He probably shouldn’t try to coax anything out of his TARDIS when his mind was still boiling.

Didn’t he overlook something important?

Oh, yes, right, he did.

He was a man on a mission.

A mission for _his_ Clara.

Clara wanted coffee.

He would fetch her coffee.

He set the coordinates and pulled the lever.


	4. Chapter 4

He looked out of the TARDIS door and smelled the air.

“Yep, Glasgow…” he sniffled, “2014… ish. I think. You can’t be completely sure, all those years after 2010 smell like coffee and cheap WiFi until 2020.”

His TARDIS hummed behind his back.

“Ah, well, okay. I guess three weeks off target are not bad, considering the condition I am in. You don’t expect a toddler to fly a helicopter, do you?”

The TARDIS hummed something indistinct.

“What?”

The TARDIS hummed more clearly now.

“Why should I fetch the coffee in London? Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how expensive a coffee in London is?”

A questioning hum.

“Well, I don’t know either, but London _is_ expensive.”

Another hum.

“It doesn’t matter if I have any intention to pay for it or not! It’s a matter of principle! And besides, she sent me for a coffee in Glasgow and here I will fetch it!”

He stepped out of the TARDIS and started walking down the street.

He was a man on a mission.

He was a man on a mission, and he didn’t need a sentient, saucy space-time-machine to advise him how and where to fulfill it.

It was the 2010s, there was a coffee shop on every street corner.

He turned left.


	5. Chapter 5

Turning around the corner, he immediately froze.

There stood the same weeping angel he had met three weeks ago.

Either each angel had its own district, or it was simply addicted to coffee shops.

He didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense.

He was a man on a mission.

And right now, he was a man on a mission who was extremely angry with an angel trying to pull the same trick twice.

He frowned and interlocked eyes with the angel.

The angel stared at him.

He stared back.

The angel stared back.

He enabled his attack eyebrows.

The angel blinked.

The angel buried its face in its hands and disintegrated into dust.

What a walkover! He hadn’t expected the angels were that easy to beat in a staring contest. He should have tried that earlier. On the other hand, _Sandshoes Him_ hadn’t been the smartest, anyway, and _Bowtie Him_ had been too easy to distract. He had just missed the obvious.

And, of course, they all hadn’t been blessed with the feature this new incarnation had.

He gently brushed over Lefty and Righty before he entered the coffee shop.

Yes, he had given his eyebrows pet names.

And no, the TARDIS didn’t need to know it!

He would tell Clara, eventually.


	6. Chapter 6

He entered the coffee shop and found it completely empty.

That was odd. He looked at his new watch which informed him it was 8 a.m.

Usually, this place should be packed with businesspeople, workers, students, each getting a hot cup of coffee or tea before heading off to whatever stupid pudding brain job they had to do.

And, even more odd, there was no one behind the counter.

He nervously tapped with his fingers on it.

If there was no one to provide him with coffee, he couldn’t fulfill his mission.

That would be bad.

Very bad.

He leaned over the counter. Someone was crouched beneath it.

“Hi there, pudding brain. Where is everybody?” He asked politely.

The human was shivering, and water came from its eyes. Humans were really strange. And they leaked, a lot.

“Lost your voice? Just sign, then. What happened?”

Obviously, he didn’t express himself clearly enough, because the human just stared at him, sobbing.

He tried sign language.

“You,” he pointed at the human, “tell me,” he pointed to his chest, “what happened here,” he made a gesture, encompassing the whole room. “Where are all the,” he made a drinking gesture with slurping sounds for emphasis, “coffee drinking,” he knocked on his head, “pudding brains.”

The human stared at him, slowly opening its mouth.

Good! You just had to find the right language, that was all! He didn’t know why the TARDIS made such a fuss about translating.


	7. Chapter 7

The human told him hesitantly that the angels had appeared three weeks ago, in random places and made people disappear. He had expected that much.

Apparently, authorities were helpless. He had expected that much, too.

So, everybody was afraid and stayed at home. This seemed like a reasonable thing to do, given the circumstances.

But companies forced workers to come to work anyway. This was stupid but didn’t surprise him. Throughout the history of humanity, companies or politicians acting responsibly or using common sense was the one thing that never happened.

The human had ended its report and now stared at him as if it expected him to do something about it.

Oh, yes, he would.

“One coffee, black, seven lumps of sugar, and one latte macchiato,” he ordered.

The human stared at him as if he had ordered a T-Rex sandwich with pickled sea cucumber. It didn’t move from its position under the counter.

He sighed.

Humans were so dense. You had to spell everything out for them.

“See… I am the Doctor. I am the man who stops the monsters. I will do something about those angels, but I am also a man on a mission. And that mission is getting a certain schoolteacher a good cup of coffee. So, you give me the coffee and _then_ , I will do something about this little angel problem you got.”

The human nodded hesitantly, got up and started working on a machine with trembling hands. The machine made menacing sounds. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, just to make sure it wasn’t an alien life form. The reading came back as “very expensive coffeemaker, Italian, mostly harmless”.

“To go?” The worker asked.

“To run, preferably,” he answered, and the human just nodded, put a lid on both cups and put them in a carrier.


	8. Chapter 8

On second thoughts, he should have fetched the coffee _after_ he stopped the monsters. It was a bit annoying to stare angels down while carrying two cups of coffee.

And it probably looked stupid to bystanders.

He hated to look stupid in public.

There were more angels than he had expected. But most of them didn’t expect a staring contest and therefore, they were easy to stare down.

He got distracted by Necropolis and some other cemeteries, but soon learned to use his screwdriver to avoid ruining his eyeballs in the attempt to stare down an ordinary headstone.

After about four hours of running and staring, he was rather sure that Glasgow was now free of weeping angels.

He threw his screwdriver in the air, caught it, blew on it and put it in his trouser pocket.

Yes, it was a childish gesture but being the Doctor gave him every right to act childish every once in a while. Always had, always would. He had just defeated some terrible monsters. Besides, neither Clara nor his TARDIS were here to see it and make fun of him.

Apropos TARDIS: he had left her standing in the city center. He started towards her, whistling a tune from a human TV series he had forgotten the name of…


	9. Chapter 9

As he approached his TARDIS, he saw something in the corner of his right eye. A statue!

He immediately reached for his screwdriver but couldn’t find it.

He started rummaging his pockets, but there were many and he wasn’t familiar with all of them in his new coat.

If this was an angel in disguise, there was no time to waste.

He jumped up the pedestal, apologized to the horse for the inconvenience as he mounted it, and interlocked eyes with the horseman.

The statue stared back.

He enabled his attack eyebrows.

The statue was unimpressed.

Well, if it didn’t blink, he had no intention to do so, either.

 _He_ had time.

Well, not really, he was a man on a mission.

But to fulfill this mission, he first had to get rid of _every_ angel.

He intensified his stares.

The statue did the same.

He wouldn’t back down. He frowned even more and stared even more menacingly.

This statue was stubborn and insisted on staring back. He couldn’t blame it. He wouldn’t be too keen on turning into dust, either.

His eyeballs started to feel dry, but he didn’t back down.

He kept staring.

He was a man on a mission.

It started to get uncomfortable, but he kept staring.

He had a mission to fulfill and he wouldn’t blink.

He.

Wouldn’t.

Blink.


	10. Chapter 10

His eyeballs were as dry as the desert of Hanroximus.

His eyebrows began to cramp.

He didn’t know that there were muscles which were able to cramp if he frowned for too long. But apparently, there were.

He held on to his death stare, nonetheless.

His eyebrows began to flutter. Again, he had no idea they could do that.

The statue, however, was surprisingly unfazed.

He doubted he would be able to hold his stare for more than another minute. Maybe 66 seconds if he was good.

Was he a good gazer?

He hoped so.

He would ask Clara once he brought her the coffee. Only if he survived this without blinking, of course. Otherwise it would probably take him some time to get back from the past to ask her.

He wondered if he was still newly regenerated enough to pop out his eyeballs and grow new ones, because, honestly, he felt they were now so dry they started shrinking.

He was sure the next thing they did was withering like grapes, become raisin-like, and fall to the ground.

That sounded unpleasant. Maybe blinking and finding himself transferred to medieval Glasgow was the better idea? At least he would keep his eyesight.

Suddenly, he heard a familiar humming behind him.


	11. Chapter 11

The TARDIS made a sound that was the equivalent of a human clearing its throat. He didn’t know _what_ the TARDIS cleared, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

“What?”

He asked, still interlocking eyes with the statue who now wore a smug smile. Or did he imagine it because he had stared at it for too long?

The TARDIS made a questioning sound.

“No, I don’t see anything conspicuous about that statue.”

The TARDIS hummed.

“Yes, I see that it is bronze, I’m not dumb.”

The TARDIS hummed, more intense.

“So what? I wore a ridiculously long scarf, frilled shirts, sometimes matched with a green velvet coat and a black bowtie, heck, I wore more bowties than I can count, I wore fezzes, and patchwork coats with a cat brooch, I even wore celery as decoration on my coat because I thought it was neat! And don’t get me started on my question mark phase… I’m not in the position to question anyone’s fashion choices, am I? If this angel wants to wear a traffic cone on its head, who am I to criticize it?”

The TARDIS hummed a long and thoughtful hum.

“Familiar? No, this angel doesn’t look familiar!”

Although… he looked closer. Now that she mentioned it, no, this statue didn’t look like an angel. It had a uniform. And now, it even seemed the face was a familiar one…

“You?”

He stammered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those familiar with Glasgow will have already suspected where this was heading, of course. This fic is as much a bow to the artwork of @attadance as it is a love letter to the city of Glasgow and its people. We definitely need more traffic cones on the heads of statues!


	12. Chapter 12

“The… the… not ship commanding one? The Not-Nelson one? The Not-A-Fan-Of-Napoleon one?”

He finally allowed himself to blink and rubbed his eyes because he realized that he wasn’t in immediate danger. Maybe in immediate danger of losing his eyesight and being overwhelmed by memories, but not of being transported to an earlier Glasgow.

“Arthur?”

He finally found the name and enough of his senses to immediately scold himself for talking to a statue.

But, yes, this was good old Arthur, the later Duke of Wellington. They had quite some adventures together when he still played the flute. All the memories flowed back into his mind. Thinking about Serena made him sad, so he quickly apologized to the statue and the horse for intruding their personal space and crawled down the pedestal.

Forcing the memories away, he grabbed the coffee and entered the TARDIS.

“Warm it up, will you, old girl?”

The TARDIS hummed.

“I know it would have been smarter to fetch it _after_ having defeated the angels. But as I’m about to rectify some of my past mistakes in this incarnation I can just as well make new ones along the way, can’t I?”

Another hum.

“Yes, fine, fine, you are right, you are not my servant, I will warm it up myself, I know where the microwave is…”

He sighed as he approached the next kitchen. He just hoped the microwave wouldn’t burst into flames like the last one. For no apparent reason he and household appliances had a rather explosive relationship.

The TARDIS beeped.

He stopped in his tracks.

“What is it?”

He asked, spinning around, starting back to the console room, already hoping being spared the microwave experiment.

The TARDIS hummed some details while he watched the figures and coordinates on the monitor.

“A _Dalek_ attack?”

He sighed. Stupid old universe. The more he saved it…

“Seems you have to take care of the coffee, old girl!”

He couldn’t help but smile smugly as he typed in the coordinates to save the only soul on this “Wasp Delta” – whatever that was – he would be able to rescue.

The TARDIS hummed.

“Right. I’ll better warm the coffee up _after_ I got this done.”

It was ridiculous how complicated it was to fetch some coffee for Clara. He could only hope this was not symptomatic for every endeavor this incarnation embarked on.

“Well, one small detour doesn’t hurt anyone, right?”

He was not sure if he talked to himself, the TARDIS or the universe as he pulled the lever.

This is the comic by @attadance that inspired this fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, that was my take on why the Doctor needed three weeks to fetch some coffee and what happened between “Deep Breath” and “Into the Dalek”, inspired by @attadance's comic. I hope you liked it!


End file.
